Page 228 - grimms-fairy-tales

ate eagerly of them, and then she grew sad and ill. A little
while later she called her husband, and said to him, weep-
ing. ‘If I die, bury me under the juniper-tree.’ Then she felt
comforted and happy again, and before another month had
passed she had a little child, and when she saw that it was
as white as snow and as red as blood, her joy was so great
that she died.
Her husband buried her under the juniper-tree, and wept
bitterly for her. By degrees, however, his sorrow grew less,
and although at times he still grieved over his loss, he was
able to go about as usual, and later on he married again.
He now had a little daughter born to him; the child of his
first wife was a boy, who was as red as blood and as white as
snow. The mother loved her daughter very much, and when
she looked at her and then looked at the boy, it pierced her
heart to think that he would always stand in the way of her
own child, and she was continually thinking how she could
get the whole of the property for her. This evil thought took
possession of her more and more, and made her behave very
unkindly to the boy. She drove him from place to place with
cuffings and buffetings, so that the poor child went about in
fear, and had no peace from the time he left school to the
time he went back.
One day the little daughter came running to her moth-
er in the store- room, and said, ‘Mother, give me an apple.’
‘Yes, my child,’ said the wife, and she gave her a beautiful
apple out of the chest; the chest had a very heavy lid and a
large iron lock.
‘Mother,’ said the little daughter again, ‘may not brother